My firefighter friend Nick Via asked me to come up to Sullivan Fire Station 5 on April 22nd, to take photos of the Live Burn Training, so I cleared my calendar and did just that. I was able to visit with several of my firefighter friends there from Sullivan and St Clair, and did a little rockhounding in the parking lot with the daughter of Sullivan Firefighter Joe Kincaid…turns out she likes to collect rocks too.

The Training Division has done a great job of creating permanent burn house structures, utilizing railroad containers for the structures, and on the inside they still use straw bales and wood pallets to create a hot fire and heavy smoke for a realistic effect. Firefighters don turn out gear and air tanks/masks to enter the structure and extinguish the fire in teams, with a safety team assembled outside the structure on each rotation.

Seeing what they have been able to construct there in the last few years, brought back a lot of memories from the 80`s and 90`s when I started the Training Program for Sullivan Fire District at the request of the Board of Directors in the mid 1980`s. I had built up alot of contacts with Fire Service Instructors over the years and from my time at the State Fair Fire Department, so they appointed me as the Training Coordinator for the District and asked me to create a training program for the Department. 

I operated in the same way, except that we had older homes donated to the department for training purposes. I was lucky to have several firefighter friends that helped me with the construction skill sets of creating burn rooms with drywall sheets nailed to the walls and ceilings, and then we brought in straw bales and wood pallets to build fires with on each rotation of firefighters entering the house to extinguish the fires. The instructors would always allow them to enter the house, and then watch the behavior of the fire as it would build up in the room, watch it as the flames traveled across the ceiling, and feel the intense heat as it built up inside the room, before finally putting the fire out with the hoseline and exiting the room and house. Back then, when the training was completely done, Sullivan firefighters would burn the house down at the request of the owner and we stayed on scene in fire attack / protective mode the entire time, with water curtains set up to protect nearby structures if needed. We had great cooperation from the City Departments to block off streets as well and help in other areas as needed. 

With the assistance of the Missouri Fire Rescue Training Institute, I was often able to hire Chief Markgraff, Chief Sachens, Chief Kriska, and Captain Crunchy Albright as our Instructors. We always started out with class room instruction on Fireground Safety, Firefighting Techniques, and Fire Behavior. Our Instructors were experts in these fields due to their many years of experience and knowledge. We always had a full house of trainees from near and far, and we used a lot of older homes as burn structures until the EPA stepped in and put an end to it with new laws in the nineties. When that chapter came to an end, I asked the District Board for permission to construct a smoke house upstairs in Station One and presented a blueprint of one that I found in a copy of Fire Engineering Magazine. I consulted with Wes Heidbrier to see if it was feasible to build a story and a half smoke house upstairs and he made it happen. Several of us assisted him with minor work details and soon enough, it was constructed with panels that could be slid into slots of the walls to change the pattern and create rooms within the structure to change things up on the firefighters. There was also an attic / roof joist tunnel in the middle of the smokehouse, and at the end of the house, firefighters could climb up a ladder into the upper half story and exit thru a door at the other end. When we didnt use fake smoke inside the house, we taped over the air masks to simulate smoke. The interior smokehouse lasted a couple of decades before it was torn down to create living quarters for the full time firefighters while Station 5 was being built. 

Here are some photos that I took that day at the Live Burn Training…you will see a lot of Teamwork and Brotherhood going on….

AVI 20 Nick Via With a Crew of Younger Firefighters 3rd Team

AVI 37 Nick Via With 2nd Crew of Younger Firefighters 2nd Run

AVI 80 Joe Stokes Fire as 1st Team Enters Back of Container

I talked to my buddy Captain Billy Williams, of St Clair Fire Department, he and his crew were there with their new fire truck, I asked him if they could come in hot to the scene so I could shoot video of it in its finest glory and he came thru for me….

AVI 89 Second Team Live Burn Training St Clair FD Crew

AVI 91 Second Crew St Clair FD Live Burn Training SFPD